Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Concerto in G Major for Piano and Orchestra
Maurice Ravel was among the most fastidious composers both as musician and in his personal
habits. But he had one odd quirk of character – the most passionate love of his life was quite
possibly his love for his own music, and he never passed up an opportunity to play his piano
works in public, even though his technical competence was middling at best and most of his
piano music lay on the cutting edge of instrumental virtuosity. So around 1929 he conceived the
idea of writing a concerto which he could premiere in Paris and then take on tour throughout
Europe. As usual, because of his meticulous and ruthlessly self-critical attitude toward
composition, work on the 25-minute concerto progressed very slowly. It was not ready for
performance until three years later, and, despite several bouts of truly maniacal practicing, Ravel
was never ready to play it at all. The Paris premiere, in January 1932, went to his long-time
associate MARGUERITE Long with Ravel conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra.
According to an interview with Pierre Leroi given three months before the premiere, when Ravel
was still entertaining fantasies of playing the piece himself, his wish “was to write a genuine
concerto, that is, a brilliant work, clearly highlighting the soloist’s virtuosity, without seeking to
show profundity.” Brilliant and virtuosic the concerto certainly is. Whether or not the middle
movement succeeds in avoiding profundity is open to question, although Ravel’s assertion that
profundity was not part of his intention can probably be accepted at face value. What he meant
by a “genuine concerto” was a reaction to the piano concertos of Brahms, which he felt were
written for piano against orchestra. In Ravel’s concerto the orchestra is light and transparent, not
of overwhelming size, and all the principals of the wind and brass sections have substantial solo
opportunities, more reminiscent of the practice of Mozart than of the late romantics. Most
important, grandiosity is studiously avoided – the motion is swift, deft, subtle, and sure. When all
is done the audience leaves for intermission with the satisfied feeling that the composer has done
his job supremely well – not a note could have been otherwise.
The opening of the concerto inevitably brings to mind the beginning of Stravinsky’s Petrushka –
the same fairground atmosphere, with drum roll, folk-like melody in the piccolo, and the piano
providing a blurred underpinning with figuration in two keys at once (the latter idea a virtual
steal from Stravinsky’s ballet). In the exposition of this sonata movement five distinct themes are
developed: after a restatement of the opening tune on the solo trumpet there appears the second
theme on the piano alone, very Spanish in flavor, which graphically imitates the strumming of a
guitar. Appended to this theme is a jazzy, Gershwinesque tag of five notes in the high clarinet
and muted trumpet. A second jazz tune unfolds in the piano against a syncopated
accompaniment, in a more inward blues style, and is again interrupted by the five-note tag. There
follows yet a third jazz-inflected theme in the piano, and one can almost feel the composer’s
delight at taking the syncopated accompaniment of the previous tune and turning it into a
playfully mocking motive in the treble of the piano, which then takes on a life of its own. The
development section concerns itself mainly with the play of two themes, the opening melody,
developed by the piano in toccata-like fashion, and the five-note jazz tag. A brief cadenza of
irregular scale figures leads to the recapitulation. All the material of the exposition makes its
reappearance here, but there are several rather amazing new developments. While the piano
remains mute the second jazz tune – the lazy blues – now appears as a cadenza for harp, played
in eerie harmonics against a background of glissandos, and all jazz feeling is drained from it so
that it seems like some ghostly shade of its former self. In a continuation of the cadenza the
woodwinds imitate the natural playing style of the harp, while the solo horn in its highest register
intones the erstwhile blues melody. Then strangest of all, the piano enters with a solo cadenza
that is a variation of the last of the jazz tunes, but, as if infected by the uncanny spirit of what has
just preceded it, the right hand plays series of connected trills that imitate the style of the
“musical saw” – a sound both strangely poetic and unforgettably weird. A coda based mainly on
the first theme brings the movement to a buoyant close.
The adagio’s magnificent opening piano solo is elegiac and consoling at once. Although it
appears to float out in a single effortless wave of inspiration, it actually cost the composer no end
of trouble – by his own admission it was wrested note by note out of an agonizing bout of
creative block. There is an apollonian coolness about the melody, a kind of remoteness that hints
at tremendous emotional depths but doesn’t let one too close to them. Towards the end of its
long, winding course, which has no literal repetitions, the piano is joined by flute, oboe, and
clarinet in solo phrases that bring this first section of the movement to its expressive high point.
The middle section continues the smooth rhythmic flow, but now the harmony is far more darkly
tinged by beautiful and poignant dissonances, mostly created by the simultaneous appearance of
major and minor forms of the same scale. Slowly rising chords in different parts of the orchestra
and more rapid figuration in the piano lead to a climax in which heartbreak seems to lie just
beneath the iridescent surface. A beautiful modulation leads immediately to a return of the
opening section. In his greatest gift to the English horn Ravel has that instrument carry the entire
melody, supported and decorated by figuration in the piano. One of the most magical moments is
the deceptive cadence at the conclusion of the English horn solo, which ushers in valedictory
comments from the other solo winds. The adagio is a movement whose apparent simplicity of
form conceals an astonishing perfection of craftsmanship and subtlety of expression. It is one of
the key passages in his oeuvre where the uniqueness of Ravel’s genius is most completely
manifest.
The third movement is a different matter altogether – a light, fast, youthfully sassy, almost
frivolous sonata-rondo of tastefully rampaging good spirits. The opening once again recalls
Petrushka with its military drum roll, booming bass drum and general fairground atmosphere.
The themes, short and rhythmically chiseled, all bring with them the aura of some place other
than the concert hall – a jazz riff, a snatch of folk-like melody, a military fanfare. Apart from
some whip-cracking mock-theatrics which provide punctuation, it is a virtually non-stop toccata
for the piano. The overall effect of the movement is that of a playful, invigorating and much –
needed slap in the face.
© David St. George